September 18, 2013

Dragged Into Sunlight - Widowmaker

There isn't a great deal of aggressive music that profoundly disturbs the listener in a primitive, primal way, an aspect that causes the hair on the back of the neck to stand up and something deep in the pit of the gut to feel cold and sour. Dragged Into Sunlight are one of the few bands capable of producing music that feels genuinely dangerous. Their last full-length, Hatred for Mankind, was a lovely atrocity, but dwelt a little too much on the theatricality of evil, incorporating many sound bites and samples into the work, making it feel at once a bit slick and cluttered. Widowmaker has pushed beyond the manicured surface of foulness into a rotten heart.

The three-song album is best consumed as a single monumental track, one that follows the basic three-act structure of any narrative. The first track is all build-up, gathering tension, at once mincing and predatory, the awful and delicate approach of something huge, reeking of blood and tipped with talons. When the torrent of violence comes with the beginning of the second track, the savagery is almost a relief. Dragged into Sunlight combine the bleakest atmospheres of black metal, which hit the back of the throat like oily smoke, with the rich, textured despair of fine doom and the physical, sadistic ferocity of death metal. It's not often to encounter music this conceptually sophisticated and well executed that also, in its most secret depths, simply hates you.